Sir Alan Walters

Sir Alan Walters has worked with AIG Trading, a subsidiary of AIG International, since 1991. AIG Trading trades currencies, metals and energy and has offices in London, the US and Singapore. He was Chief Economic Advisor to Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (on secondment), 1980-84 and 1989.

Sir Alan was born in Leicester, England, on June 17, 1926, and married Margaret Patricia (Paddie) Wilson in 1975. He was educated at Alderman Newton’s Secondary School, Leicester, and University College, Leicester. From there he went to Nuffield College, Oxford, for a year as a research student and thence to the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer in Econometrics in 1952. He was appointed Professor of Econometrics and Head of the Department of Econometrics and Statistics in 1961. Subsequently he was Sir Ernest Cassel Professor of Economics in the University of London (at the LSE), 1968-76, and Professor of Economics at the Johns Hopkins University, 1976-91.

In 1953, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and elected a Fellow of the International Econometric Society in 1964. Since 1984, he has been a Senior Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London.

He has held visiting professorships at Northwestern University (1958/9), the University of Virginia (Fall 1966), The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1966/67) and Monash University, Melbourne (1970). He was Economic Advisor to the World Bank, 1976-80, 1984-98.

He has received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Birmingham, Leicester University and the Universidad Fransico Marroquin, Guatemala City. He also received an Honorary Fellowship from Cardiff University in July 2001.

Among his numerous appointments, Sir Walters served on the Roskill Commission on the Third London Airport 1968-70. He has been a Consultant to the Governments of Israel, Singapore and Malaysia and to the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East. He has advised widely in Central and South America including advice to the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Peru and Venezuela. He also served on the Blue Ribbon Commission to develop an Economic program for reform in Hungary in 1989/1990, and the Chetukovsky Commission on Poland in 1989.

He has contributed widely to professional and learned journals. His books include: Growth without Development (1966); The Economics of Road User Charges, (1968); An Introduction to Econometrics, (1969, 2nd ed. 1971); The Economics of Ocean Freight Rates (1969); Money and Banking, Penguin Economic Readings (1973); Noise and Prices (1974); Microeconomic Theory (1977); Port Pricing and Investment for Developing Countries (1979); Britain’s Economic Renaissance: Margaret Thatcher’s Reforms 1979-86 (1986); Sterling in Danger (1990); and The Economics and Politics of Money, collected essays ed Kent Matthews,1999. He has also written over 100 academic articles on a wide range of subjects that includes monetary and fiscal policy in both the developed and developing world, transport and congestion, econometric studies of production and cost function and various macro-economic models.

He has had a column in Forbes Magazine and The Scotsman and has contributed regularly to a variety of newspapers as well as AIG Trading’s World Market Advisory.